Sophie's Story

      Uncle Joe, my mom's younger brother, passed away early this morning, he was 78. A week ago he suffered a massive stroke, the same type that killed his mother, my grandmother, nearly 37 years earlier. No one was expecting this.      We weren't real close to him or his family as they lived in Virginia and didn't visit often. A few times my cousins were sent to stay on the farm for all or part of the summer. I remember we had some good times. We drove out to Virginia to visit them once when I was seven. All I remember was grandma cooking eggs in an electric skillet in out hotel room and seeing a crab on the beach.     When I graduated from college and got my pharmacist license he made a remark that I was depriving a man of the ability to support his family. It was upsetting to hear him say that. I didn't speak to him for a long time.  I realized much later that the idea of a woman being a pharmacist was an unheard of thing to him. Also I m...

      We were having wonderful time on New Year's Eve. C made the best steak bites he'd ever made. The new cheeseball recipe I'd made was really good. The chip dip mix I made was also tasty. We watched the movie 'Conclave' and had just finished the movie 'Grease'. (The original one with Olivia Newton-John and John Travolta.) I decided it was time to clean the litterbox before we broke out the sparkling juice for a toast.     I turned on the light and walked into the laundry room where the litterboxes are. I noticed a large puddle of water around the hot water heater, furnace pedestal and a corner of the room. I walked out again and told C. The good time we were having came to a grinding halt. The water heater had leaked before, but not this bad. We we planning to purchase another one, but were holding off until after the first of the year. C checked around the hot water heater carefully. When he didn't see anything coming from the bottom of the heater he...

      My alarm went off at 5 AM as it always does. After going to bed at close to 1AM, my first thought was to turn it off and go back to sleep. I couldn't do it. The cats needed to be fed and I didn't want to interrupt my usual morning routine.     I gave each cat half a can of wet food which is their treat twice a week and on holidays. While they ate I took down all our old calendars. We usually have three. Two of them are traditional hanging calendars in the kitchen and in our computer room. The other is a page a day calendar in the kitchen. I buy different page a day calendars every year. This year's calendar is inspiring quotes from women.     I gathered the old calendars up and put them in the recycling bin. Then I put up the new ones and threw any any nonrecyclable packaging.     As most of you who read this know, New Years is my favourite holiday. Last night we celebrated with an assortment of dips, chips, a cheese ball, some vegetabl...